Red Hat CEO suggests Oracle is feeling the heat

Rob writes "The previously rosy relationship between Oracle Corp and Red Hat Inc appears to have soured following Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss Inc and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's suggestion that his company could move into the Linux business. Red Hat's chief executive, Matthew Szulik, has written in response to a recent interview with Ellison in which Ellison suggested the company would be interested in distributing and supporting Linux. "Is it possible that the dominant provider of databases feels pressure from its long-time partner, Red Hat, because of our recent purchase of an open source middleware company, JBoss?" Szulik asked, although he also played down suggestions of a "showdown" between the two companies."

Windbags

[Billosaur]

While not exactly a declaration of hostility, the letter is provocative given the change in relationship between Red Hat and Oracle noted by Goldman Sachs. Ellison had the first words with his statement that "they're not supporting the customers very well," now Szulik has responded.

And so the pissing contest begins. Why? Of what possible use is it? None. Look, Oracle wants in to the Linux market, so it can compete both within the open source arena and have a chance at digging into Microsoft's market share. I've said repeatedly this move is about 5 years overdue. Since it appears Oracle is not interested in Red Hat or Novell (I said appears; never let it be said Ellison couldn't change his mind in a heartbeat), they'll go after someone else, like Ubuntu. This doesn't stand to hurt Red Hat or Novell; any Linux distribution they swallow up is going to end up having its creativity choked off by the bloated development structure that is Oracle.

Move along -- nothing to care about here. We'll see how it pans out in the marketplace when and if Oracle takes the plunge. Sabre rattling at this point is just silly.

mysql?

[NynexNinja]

I really don't think Redhat or Jboss has anything to do with Oracle or any pressure that might be put on them forcing change in their business. If anything, MySQL is largely responsible for this... When you have a database that a) is faster than Oracle and b) supports all the features of Oracle and c) can be clustered easier than Oracle and best of all d) it does not cost $200,000 per copy. I would be concerned too.. Their market share is fading away. I think Redhat is only referencing this to make themselves feel like part of the game, when in fact I'm not sure that they are even involved in any of this. Does Redhat write database server software? Not the last time I checked...

Re:Good idea for Oracle

[WinterSolstice]

That'd be nice, except that with IBM DB2 on IBM AIX running on IBM RS/6000 systems, they still point fingers. I have repeatedly been forced (as a customer) to make different divisions within IBM talk to each other. It would seem to be good, but it really is almost the same.

-WS

Re:mysql?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) No.

b) LOL.

c) Riiiiight.

d) Oracle doesn't cost 200k per copy.

Damn. Quit spewing lies man.

How the hell did this get mod'd +5? Insightful? LOL! Damn troll.

Re:mysql?

[adolfojp]

MySQL and Oracle are two different products aimed at two very different markets.

While MySQL will be more than enough for many uses, there are some situations where using it instead of something like Oracle is irresponsible, if not downright criminal.

Saying that MySQL can compete with Oracle in terms of speed, features, and clustering capabilities is an argument that is not grounded in reality.

Re:Windbags

[SeeMyNuts!]

"Of what possible use is it?"

These things at least get decision makers to stop for a moment and have "Oracle" or "Red Hat" enter their thought stream.

What does Oracle want and what does Oracle need?

[ahmusch]

Oracle wants an OS that runs on commodity (x86) hardware, so that it can publish a virtual machine with Oracle preconfigured. (Reference the Oracle appliance of days of yore.)

Why?

Because virtualization is hot in databases. Having lots of servers spinning idle that you may need (and paying Oracle for the privilege) is costly, and Larry sees market share, well, if not eroding, then certainly being nibbled at. By shipping a distro with Oracle preconfigured, he:

1. Shows a commitment to his customers for a lower TCO. (Remember, the amount of time the IT staff spends installing and working through issues with the software stack counts.)
2. Punches SQL Server in the mouth.
3. Takes more control of his destiny by being able to more effectively tune the OS for database tasks, yielding better performance and price-performance in things like TPC-C and TPC-H.

Oracle needs to use a Linux distro that has traction within the data center, and in the US, that's either Novell (SuSE) or Red Hat. Those are the only distros officially supported by Oracle now, which probably helps to explain their traction within the data center.

Oracle will buy one. It's just a matter of which one.

And if I were RedHat's CEO, I'd be really careful pissing off Larry. It's not like Larry's afraid to, I don't know, buy your company so he can fire your ass. *cough*Siebel*cough*

Re:Linux Success Puts It in Oracle's Crosshairs

[PCM2]

Already last fall, one might theorize that Oracle Corp. had decided it had been feeding Linux enough, and that it should start watering some other ecosystems: Oracle Selects Solaris as preferred OS

Oh please, that was so obviously a bone thrown to Sun. I'm sure it was not done without some consideration given by Sun to Oracle. Plus, it's easy to announce that Solaris is your preferred OS when ... well ... Solaris is your preferred OS. The market for Oracle boxes running on Linux is growing rapidly and may overtake those running Solaris in the near future, but it hasn't yet. More people still run Oracle on Solaris than any other OS, last I heard.

Re:Showdown? lol

[Jason Earl]

There's a funny thing about market economies. The market produces what people have shown an interest in paying money for. If Oracle were to buy Red Hat with the intention of shutting Red Hat down, then you can basically guarantee that several other "Enterprise" Linux distributions would spring up as if by magic. This is especially true if Oracle paid current market prices for Red Hat. The source code in question would still be available, and there would be a large community looking for a new home.

In the long run Oracle is likely to have the same problems as Sun. Like Sun, Oracle's real problem is that Red Hat offers a software stack that is competitive with Oracle's software stack while maintaining an R&D budget that is a couple orders of magnitude smaller than Oracle's budget. Oracle's size is precisely the problem. As commodity software becomes more and more widespread the ridiculous profit margins that Oracle needs to survive will get harder and harder to produce. Sure, there are lots of Oracle customers that can't really afford to move to a lower cost but less featureful software stack, but Oracle is going to find that an increasing number of its customers are unwilling to pay for features that they don't really need or use. Lots of technical folks get all excited about "Enterprise" software, but in the long run inexpensive commodity software that actually gets used tends to move up the technology stack and crowd out software that relies on the huge profit margins that can be found at the high end of the spectrum. Red Hat's cost structure is designed around taking advantage of the much lower profit margins associated with commodity Free Software. Oracle's cost structure, on the other hand, is designed around the much higher profit margins that Oracle has historically been able to squeeze out of the market. Oracle can pretend that it can compete with Red Hat, but really it can't, not without shedding a lot of its workforce. If Oracle were to lower its workforce so that it was competitive with Red Hat then customers that are currently paying huge margins for Oracle products and services would undoubtedly take their business elsewhere.